Microsoft's Former CEO Says Disagreement With Gates on Smartphones Drove Them Apart

what was it like taking over from a founder/ceo people like to focus in on bill with CEO you were CEO this was kind of like my baby my baby and Bill's baby and we were growing at nurturing it he was kind of like the senior partner I was the junior partner if it's in the raising of children I would say he was more like you know mom gets to decide more than dad but you know so I've I have I take great satisfaction and the things we accomplished throughout the time not just when I became CEO when I became CEO we had a very miserable year bill didn't know how to work for anybody and I didn't know how to manage Bill I'm not sure I ever learned the ladder things lightened up some and then I would say my life changed a lot in 2008 when bill actually left the company that bill had asked me he said look I'm happy to help you any weight but I don't want you to need me so I can come and go if you want me great but I have another life and in a sense I finally felt like okay we're not partners anymore I have to take accountability and I think I probably did some of my very best work at the company after bill left actually really like what push this into being sustained that investment you know that's really where we got into the cloud we started what's now office 365 and Azure after bill left you know we pushed into the hardware business with surface etc and now Satya Nadella my successor is sort of taking things there to infinity and beyond if you will how do you feel about being asked about your successes and your failures what you're most proud of what you're least proud of you know at this stage I'm almost three years out it's ancient history that I you know have a lot of success yeah there's some things I wish I'd done differently of course I started a company that had about 2 and 1/2 million of Revenue and 30 people and I left a company that had 22 billion in profit and I feel like that net net pretty good success what's your relationship with Bill like today yeah we've kind of drifted drifted apart he's got his life I sort of have mine Microsoft kind of the the thing that really bound us we started off as friends but then really got quite a mashed around Microsoft and you know since that since I've gone you know we really have drifted a little bit you know he wasn't happy about when you left you left suddenly or you know what really happened well I mean it was definitely a you know not a simple thing for either one of us I think that at the end of the day there are probably two things a little bit of a difference in opinion on the strategic direction of the company which i think is is a challenge and then number two you know he and I had kind of always had what I would call brotherly relationship and the good and the good parts and the bad parts and I just think towards the end that was that was a bit more difficult than not particularly with the strategic direction change and you know the stock price wasn't going anything so that anywhere so the rest of the board felt pressure despite the fact that profits were going up so I think you had kind of a combustible situation and does it ever bother you don't you don't get credit for that sure and no I mean at the end of the day I have the great sort of comfort of knowing what I did and feeling good about myself and everything else doesn't really matter where did you want to take the company where did he want to take the company I think there was a fundamental disagreement about how important it was to be in the hardware business I had pushed surface the board had been a little little reluctant in supporting it and then things came to a climax around what to do about the phone business Sachin adela was on stage recently where he said missing the mobile phone was one of the biggest mistakes in Microsoft's history what would you have done differently I would have done thing I would have moved into the hardware business faster and recognized that what we had in the PC where there was a separation of chips systems and software wasn't largely going to reproduce itself in the mobile world I wish I thought about the model of subsidizing phones through the operators you know people like to point to this quote where I said iPhones will never sell it was because I'd the price is sex or $700 was too hi and there was business model innovation by Apple to get it essentially built into the monthly cell phone bill we should have been in the hardware business sooner in the phone case and we were still suffering what I would call some of the effects of our Vista release of Windows which sucked up a huge amount of resource for a much longer period of time than it should have because we stumbled over it and when you have a lot of your best engineers sort of in a sense being non-productive for a while it really takes the toll would you have bought Nokia I certainly wanted to buy Nokia the board at first disagreed with that and then came back and said the company should should go ahead even though I had decided to to leave I think it was if executed in a certain way I think it made a lot of sense a company chose to go another direction and that's you know that's that's the decision the company made do you think I see the stock price flying sky high and all you can say is that the market certainly certainly agrees with the the direction side just taking the company and I'm super excited about that

Channel: Bloomberg Technology

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Id: qFe0S3F389w

Length: 5min 36sec (336 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 04 2016